Positioning is attracting considerable attention from both research and industry and is considered as a smart service provided to smart cities. Search and rescue, health-care applications and logistics are a few examples of applications which can benefit from having localization information.
Outdoor positioning is a traditional service provided by the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is a satellite based positioning System. The GPS does not perform well indoors because the signal is easily obstructed by most construction materials and hence making it useless for indoor positioning. For that raison, different technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), UWB, Laser and Wi-Fi have been proposed to perform indoor localization.
Using a same system to localize an object or a person indoor and outdoor, without the need for extraneous infrastructure, is, however, not available.
Construction Site Safety:
Security, alarm system for construction workers:
On most construction sites, trucks and other vehicles move in and out on a regular basis for deliveries of materials, site preparation, pouring of concrete, removal of debris. Unfortunately, there are seldom any systems in place to manage all the traffic. As a result, the risk of injury in a construction site motor vehicle accident can be significant.
Furthermore, construction work is considered to be one of the most hazardous industrial activities. The rate of injury in the construction industry is higher than in other industries. The most frequent causes of death in the construction industry are falls from height, followed by fatal accidents with vehicles. According to the sources of The National UAE newspaper, 10 people in Abu Dhabi died on several construction sites in 2011.
In 2012, the number of accidents related to vehicles (trucks) having caused in France a permanent disability or death is respectively 2.7% and 14.5%. In the United Kingdom, about 7 workers die as a result of accidents involving vehicles or mobile plant on construction sites every year and about 93 are seriously injured.
From a global perspective, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration has mentioned that more than 800 construction workers die every year in the United States while working. For construction workers, being struck by vehicles or other objects consist the first cause of injuries and the second cause of death.
The number of accidental injury remains at a high level despite the technical progress made on equipment development and training provided to drivers of vehicles. Organizational decisions can help in preventing worker-vehicle collisions. However, these provisions are not sufficient to substantially reduce the risk and additional technical measures are needed to inform the driver of the presence of a person in a dangerous situation in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle
Therefore, most of construction companies nowadays employ what is called a “Spotter”. A spotter's main job is to prevent back-overs, swinging cranes, and many other well-known accidents from happening by guiding vehicles away from any hazardous spots.
The system helps in eliminating the need of spotters and to overcome the drawbacks of systems using cameras which have their limitations in case of operation in dusty or dark environments.
Hospital Environment Safety:
Healthcare, tracking system to avoid nosocomial transmission:
The second target application for this technology is the hospital environment and especially in the area of infection control. Indeed, nosocomial infections are a global problem. Health care-Associated or Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAIs) are infections patients acquire while already receiving medical or surgical treatment in a health care setting. Counted among the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, estimates suggest that at any given time, one in every twenty or twenty-five hospitalized patients has an HAI. Furthermore, Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in hospitals impose significant economic consequences on the healthcare system and cost $10 Billion a Year.
Recent estimates show that every year 648,000 American develop infections while in the hospital. More than 75,000 hospital patients may not be treatable with antibiotics and that prove fatal to them.
The main cause of nosocomial infections come from the hands of medical staff (50-70% of infections) and medical devices. Washing and hand disinfection are the most important prevention method to break the germ transmission chain.